


Thinking Out Loud

by premeditated



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/F, Fem!Johnny, Fluff, Genderbend, Getting Together, Identity Reveal, Mental Link, Mind Reading, fem!Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 18:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14836814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/premeditated/pseuds/premeditated
Summary: Penny Parker and Jamie Storm usually make a good team in costume: they’re so in sync, it’s almost like they share a mind, even when they butt heads every now and then. After being hit with a magic curse of some kind, though, they reallycanread each other’s minds. Literally. And it goes just as terribly as you’d expect.





	Thinking Out Loud

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to my sister for requesting this mess.
> 
> don’t… ask me what universe this is based off of. it’s a big jumble of the mcu and the first 2.5 decades of comics that i’ve read so far, plus same vague wiggly hand gestures. don't think about it too hard.

“You know,” Penny panted as she narrowly dodged another reality-warping zap from the staff of the zany wizard villain who was currently terrorizing Manhattan, “I’m starting to get the impression you don’t like me very much. Weird, right? But you didn’t send me a Christmas card, and then there’s this whole trying-to-kill-me thing—”

The wizard (who was notably not The Wizard, capital W, or really anyone notable at all besides being the current Super-Powered Villain of the Week) roared and let out another blast aimed at her, causing Penny to dive to the side and shoot a web at the nearest building to pull herself out of the line of fire. She contorted gracefully in the air to avoid the ricochet by mere inches, barely glancing at it as it hit a fire hydrant that promptly turned into a trombone with a puff of sparkly purple smoke. She slammed into the wall of the building and clung to it with sticky fingers, breathing hard.

“It really gives a girl the wrong impression,” she babbled as she lined up her next shot. If she could just get that God-forsaken staff away from him… “There are much better ways to get my attention—”

“Yeah, you’ve gotta make a flashy entrance, for one!” yelled a voice to Penny’s right.

She yelped, startling so badly that the web she shot at the wizard’s staff went wide and hit nothing. Jamie Storm was soaring above her, striking a suggestive pose even though her body was entirely engulfed in flames and Penny could hardly see her.

“How about it, Spidey?” she crooned. “Do I have your attention? Feel like you can’t take your eyes off me?”

“I’m not actually a fan of ‘loud and gaudy,’” Penny called out through gritted teeth as she once again swung across the battle field, energy beams crisscrossing in her wake. “That’s what I was trying to tell the Wizard of Oz over here.”

“Bow before me, puny humans!” bellowed the villain, a clap of thunder punctuating the next bolt from his staff.

“Ah,” said Jamie, dodging the blast by the skin of her teeth, “I see your point. No one likes a drama queen, huh?”

“In your case, Torchy, I think it’s just that no one likes _you_ ,” Penny yelled as she whizzed by.

All their banter seemed to be making the wizard even angrier, to the point where he was throwing out bolts of energy with increasing speed and abandon. Penny, who had been struggling to keep on the offensive before, now could barely even manage to dodge quickly enough. She couldn’t sit still for even a moment, relegated to bouncing around the street on her webs like a ping pong ball, and Jamie wasn’t fairing any better. At this rate, one of them would get critically injured before either of them could even take a shot at the bad guy.

“Darn it, Flamebrain,” she muttered breathlessly, “I had it under control—”

“You good, Webhead?” Jamie called from somewhere off to the side. “You went radio silent for a minute there.”

Penny felt a flash of annoyance as a blast of energy singed her arm. Behind her, a mailbox became a bouquet of petunias.

“I’m just swell,” she bit out, tugging a bit viciously on her next web line. “Everything’s fine and dandy, in fact. I’ve really got this guy on the ropes, as you can see—”

“Spider-Woman, look out!”

Even with her fast reflexes, Penny barely had time to register Jamie’s shout before something was slamming into her side, knocking her off-course and towards the side of a skyscraper. In the split-second before she hit the glass, she realized what had happened:

A stray bolt had been heading right for her. She, being distracted and having listened to her Spider-Sense blaring nonstop for the past hour, hadn’t even noticed. Jamie had, though, and she’d taken it upon herself to save Penny—by flying at her, flaming off, and smashing into her like a bullet.

They slammed into a window, glass shattering around them as they crashed to the floor of the empty office beyond. Penny had one breathless moment to take it all in, suspended in time: Jamie hovering over her, cheeks flushed and blue eyes wide. Glass sparkling in her hair as it fell forward, long golden curtains framing either side of Penny’s face. A shared breath, the start of a shout—“Hey, are you—”

Then lightning zipped down her spine, and everything went black.

* * *

 

When Penny faded back into consciousness, her first thought was, _Ow_. It was pretty appropriate, considering the way her body felt like one giant bruise.

Her second thought was, _Jesus, fuck,_ fuck, _that hurts_ , which made her frown and start to sit up, because that… was weird. She hardly _ever_ swore. What—

“Oh, thank God, you’re awake.”

Penny blinked as Jamie came into focus next to her, babbling away. She looked rumpled and a bit cut up by their trip through the window, but no worse for wear than Penny herself. They were still sitting in the same office building, shards of glass littering the floor around them, so she couldn’t have been out for too long.

“I had no idea what to do if you didn’t wake up,” Jamie was saying. “I was literal seconds away from performing CPR, you know, and that’s _really_ not how I wanted to see your face for the first time—”

“I’m fine, Jamie,” she cut in. “And… thanks. For not looking, I mean.”

Penny inexplicably felt herself blushing as Jamie gave her a blinding smile. “No problem, Spidey. That’s what friends are for.”

“Who says we’re friends, Matchstick?” Penny teased as she started to stand and take stock of her injuries.

“Aw, c’mon, Webhead, you know you love me,” Jamie cooed, back to her usual annoying self in no time flat. “Getting zapped by some weird alien magic is a bit unorthodox for a first date, but—”

“Oh God, that Bargain Bin Merlin hit us before we passed out, didn’t he?” Penny gasped, frantically examining her body as her memories came rushing back to her. “What did it do? Do I still look the same?”

_Holy smoke, what if I have a tail or something?_ she thought hysterically, reaching behind herself to check.

Jamie snorted. “You don’t have a tail. We’re both totally normal, okay?”

“You don’t know that,” Penny snapped. “It must have done something to—wait, what?”

“What?” Jamie parroted back.

“What did you just say?” Penny asked, voice strained and body suddenly stiff. _This cannot be happening_.

“What’s not happening?” Jamie asked, thoroughly confused. Penny let out a strangled sound, a disbelieving laugh caught in her throat, and Jamie looked worried. “All I said was that you don’t have a tail! Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Jamie,” Penny said, voice cracking in a really embarrassing way, “I didn’t say that out loud.”

Jamie frowned. “What? Yes, you did.”

“No,” said Penny, “I really didn’t. Oh, God, I _didn’t_.”

Jamie made a frustrated noise, gesturing wildly with her hands. “Of course you did! How else would I have heard—hey, whoa, wait, what are you doing?!”

She leapt forward to stop Penny from pulling off her mask, but Penny just gracefully stepped out of the way. She only tugged it up enough that her mouth was visible, so that Jamie could see that her lips didn’t even twitch as she broadcast the thought, _Is_ this _out loud, Jamie?_

Jamie’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click, all her protests dying on her lips. Her eyes widened comically, and Penny knew the exact moment when she really accepted their newfound mental link, because, well—

_Oh,_ came Jamie’s thought, straight into Penny’s head.

“Oh,” Jamie breathed a moment later, staring at Penny in total surprise. “Oh, _fuck_.”

_But I have the biggest crush on Spider-Woman ever_ , was her very next thought, practically screamed into Penny’s mind as her expression morphed into something horrified.

Then she positively exploded in a cacophony of thoughts, half of which she said out loud as well: _nooooo, no no no no, this can’t be happening, I didn’t mean it, why_ me—

“Jamie!” Penny yelled a bit hysterically, yanking her mask back down because she was sure her face was now bright red, “why the heck did you think _that_?”

“I’m sorry!” Jamie wailed, looking utterly mortified. “It’s like, the second I thought ‘don’t think about that,’ I couldn’t help it! It’s not like I wanted you to hear it!”

Penny stared at her skeptically, because come _on_. “You could’ve just not thought about it at all!”

“Yeah, right,” Jamie scoffed. “You try keeping something like that out of your head once you realize you have to!”

“Nice try, but I don’t have a secret crush on you in the first place,” Penny snapped. “The only secret I have is—”

_—my secret identity_ , she finished in her head, dread blooming in the pit of her stomach.

“Spidey, wait—” Jamie said urgently, eyes wide and horrified, but it was too late. It happened in an instant.

_Don’t think about your identity_ , Penny thought desperately.

Then, so dizzyingly fast that she hadn’t even finished the first thought yet: _My name is Penny Parker_.

They both stood there in silence so dead it belonged in a graveyard, too shocked even to think anything. For a moment, anyway.

_Oh, no, that’s a really cute name_ , came Jamie’s thought. Penny glanced up sharply to find Jamie frantically shaking her head and blushing. _Agh, sorry, I didn’t—well, I_ did _mean it, but you probably didn’t want to hear it—_

“Okay, you have got to stop doing that,” Penny muttered, massaging her temples. “Just… say it all out loud. It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“Sorry,” Jamie breathed. Her hands kept clenching into fists at her sides, like she wanted to do something with them but couldn’t decide what. “Just… sorry. About this.”

“Any chance you’ve already forgotten my name?” Penny tried.

_Penny Parker_ , her brain supplied helpfully.

Jamie winced. “Sorry, buddy. I could never forget you, anyway.”

“Shut up,” Penny muttered, ignoring the way her heart fluttered in favor of dragging a weary hand down her face. “Oh, man, this is… this is not how I pictured the big reveal going.”

Beside her, Jamie stilled, all her nervous fidgeting halting at once. “You’ve… thought about it before? About telling me who you are?”

“Of course, I’ve thought about it,” Penny said, rolling her eyes. “I always figured it was kind of inevitable, since you’re unfortunately one of my best friends.”

“Oh,” Jamie breathed, not even rising to the bait of the word “unfortunately” like she normally would have. She just looked at Penny, pinning her in place with the sincerity in her eyes. “You really trust me. Thank you, Penny.”

At the sound of her name—her _real_ name, oh, yikes—from Jamie’s lips, she felt her cheeks heat up with a rush of heady warmth and shame. The breathlessness of Jamie’s voice, the sincerity when she said it with that look on her face—it was all so much more than Penny deserved. A girl like Jamie had no business being stuck on someone who couldn’t even be honest with herself.

Some of her incoherent self-loathing must have made it through to Jamie because suddenly she was frowning and reaching out to Penny. “Hey, that’s not—”

“Yes, it is,” Penny said, drawing away from her. “I haven’t trusted you at all. You wouldn’t even know my first name if it wasn’t dragged out of me by some freaky mind-welding spell.”

Jamie pursed her lips, a stubborn set to her shoulders as she crossed her arms. “You can’t convince me you’re a bad friend, Webhead,” she said firmly, “so stop trying. Maybe I’d like a little less secrecy, but I know you must have your reasons.”

Penny took a moment to be grateful that emotions couldn’t travel through their link, because the overwhelming loneliness she felt at that moment nearly choked her. She closed her eyes as all of her “reasons” flashed through her mind the same way they did every time she thought about telling someone the truth: Aunt May’s frail body in a hospital bed, Betty’s pale, crying face, Harry’s twisted sneer, Gwen’s broken, battered body—

Jamie was taking her hands, warm and steady as she looked at Penny with wide eyes.

“Yeah,” Penny said, shoulders curling up towards her ears, “I’ve got a whole bunch of _reasons_.”

“Hey, whoa, it’s okay,” Jamie said quickly, an edge of panic in her voice. “I don’t know who any of those people were— _are_ , but I’m a superhero, too, you know! Nothing bad’s going to happen to me just because I know your name—”

“It’s not just that,” Penny interrupted. She hunched even further into herself, trying to draw away, but Jamie wouldn’t let go. “Maybe you won’t get hurt, but I’ll find _some_ other way to mess this up. Trust me.”

“Mess what up?” Jamie asked.

“This!” Penny yanked her hands back so that she could gesture between them wildly. “Us! Penny Parker messes everything up eventually. It’s only a matter of time.”

Jamie frowned. “Knock it off with the self-pity parade, would you?”

Penny flushed with indignation behind her mask. “ _Excuse me_?”

“Newsflash: you can’t blame yourself for everything!” Jamie said, voice rising as Penny continued to gape at her. “I’m trying to help, here! You’ve clearly been through some shit, but you’ve got to stop using it as an excuse to avoid putting yourself out there. You don’t have a monopoly on fucking up.”

“You can’t just… just…” Penny’s words failed, her hands curling and uncurling into fists as she grasped for a way to describe her feelings. “You can’t say that! I thought you were on my side!”

“I am!” Jamie yelled, stomping her foot as flames momentarily flared up at the edges of her figure. “I’m, like, the president of the Spider-Woman Fan Club, okay? You need to hear this! And, really, ‘you can’t say that’? Is this kindergarten?”

“Shut up,” Penny hissed petulantly. “What makes you think that _you_ of all people know what I need to hear?”

“Okay, I’m going to ignore the frankly pitiful attempt to take a snipe at my character,” Jamie said primly, “because I know you’re really upset right now—”

“Oh, how gracious of you.”

“—but come on, of course I know you!” Jamie finished loudly. “You just said yourself that we’re best buds! Gal pals! BFFs!”

“You still don’t know a thing about me,” Penny insisted.

_That’s not_ my _fault_. The thought zipped through her mind like a whip, and Penny was so blindsided that she almost missed what Jamie said out loud.

“I’m literally inside your head right now. I _so_ know you.”

Penny started pacing, movements tight and jerky as she tried to get a handle on this wild burst of emotions. “So—what? You think I’m just making up all these problems about my secret identity so I can, I don’t know, make myself miserable or something? That none of it really exists and if I would stop being so dramatic then I would want to make out with you?”

_You’re being a coward_. “I think you don’t have to let it get in the way of what you want.”

Penny froze, her mind going blank like it had right after she’d thought her own name.

Jamie seemed to realize she’d gone too far, and she probably hadn’t even meant to in the first place. She was looking uneasy, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she said, “Look, Webs, I didn’t really mean—”

“Yes, you did,” Penny said, finding herself taking a step towards Jamie, then another, and another. “I’m a coward, huh?”

Jamie, to her credit, didn’t back down even when Penny had stopped right in front of her; nothing about her seemed bothered, except for the fact that she was suddenly radiating heat like a furnace.

“Yeah, you kind of are,” she said, staring down at Penny’s mask. “I’ve never met a coward as brave as you are, though. You’re something else, Spidey.”

Penny didn’t stop to think about what she did next—not even a word of warning made it to Jamie’s head to spoil the surprise. All she knew was that she didn’t want the Human Torch to be right about her, not about that.

She reached up and yanked off her mask in one fluid motion, letting it fall to the floor before she could second-guess herself.

“You know,” Penny said as her damp hair tumbled over her shoulders and forehead, brown eyes meeting blue for the very first time, “that doesn’t even make sense, but I think I get what you mean. If you ever call me a coward again, though, I’m going to hang you upside-down from the Statue of Liberty.”

Jamie nodded fervently, eyes wide and darting around like they wanted to take in every detail of Penny’s face at the same time. She was looking at Penny’s sweaty cheeks and mask hair like the whole thing was simultaneously the best and the worst thing she’d ever been allowed to see.

“Uh, so, just to be totally clear,” she croaked, “this _is_ something you wanted to do, right? Because I would feel pretty awful if you felt, I don’t know, pressured or something…”

“Oh, please,” Penny scoffed, pushing aside any of the lingering doubts trying to encroach on her confidence, “don’t give yourself that much credit, Matchstick. You can’t _make_ me do anything. I know what I want.”

Jamie’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, you do? Let’s hear it, then.”

Penny took a deep breath, steeling herself. “It’s easier if I show you, actually.”

Her gaze darted down to Jamie’s lips. She let her thoughts flood with everything she was feeling for Jamie in that moment, all her pent-up fondness and annoyance and anticipation. She even bared that little bit of insecurity that was lurking in the back, that little spark of fear that she hated to show but always felt whenever she let herself want something this bold.

Penny cleared her throat.

“Can I—”

_Yes_. Jamie was already leaning in, eyes fluttering closed before the thought had even fully formed in her head. _Oh my god—_

“—yes, do you know how long I’ve been waiting for—?”

Penny smiled into the kiss as their lips met and she swallowed the rest of Jamie’s words. They didn’t need to talk: as she lost herself to the sensation of kissing Jamie Storm, everything they could have said came through somehow. Strawberry lip gloss and warm hands cupping her cheeks. Jamie’s heartbeat thumping under Penny’s hand where it rested on her back. Her soft golden hair as Penny’s other hand slid up the nape of her neck to cradle her closer. The soft sigh that could have come from either of them, the elated feeling flitting between them…

They eventually paused for breath but didn’t pull away, foreheads leaning against each other. Jamie was looking at her with wide eyes, face flushed and this little dreamy smile on her lips like she couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Penny was sure she didn’t look any better.

_Wow_ , came a thought drifting between them.

_That was_ …

“Yeah.”

They were silent for a few more moments, until Penny snorted out an incredulous laugh.

Jamie leaned back to squint at her suspiciously. “What?”

“I just can’t believe I finally kissed Jamie Storm,” she said through her giggles, “and you don’t have anything to say except that. I thought you were supposed to be smooth with the ladies?”

“Cut me some slack here,” Jamie whined, sounding a lot more like the Human Torch that Penny knew and, unfortunately, loved. “I still can’t believe you actually like me back. You said you didn’t have a crush on me!”

Penny just smirked. “Guess you really don’t know me as well as you thought you did, hot stuff.”

Jamie smiled brightly, undiscouraged. “I’m not hearing a denial! You _liiiike_ me.”

Despite herself, Penny started to smile, too—only to be interrupted by a sudden and insistent tingling at the base of her skull.

_Incoming_.

She reacted immediately, years of experience and familiarity with her Spider-Sense lending her an uncanny quickness. In one fluid motion, she had rolled toward her mask and come up in a crouch after yanking it back over her head. Much to her surprise, Jamie had reacted just as quickly, flaming on and hovering above her in a tactically decent position.

_Maybe this’ll actually be useful in combat_ , she thought offhandedly as she aimed her webshooters at the broken window.

_Or,_ came Jamie’s reply, _I could distract you by thinking about how much I want to kiss you._

Penny’s biting response was cut off by the familiar mechanical whine of repulsors as Iron Man burst through the window, sending a torrent of shattered glass raining down on her. She barely had time to web herself out of the way, pulling herself up so that she was clinging to a wall with her hands and feet and staying there.

“Oh, good,” came his tinny-sounding voice from within the suit, “the teenyboppers are still alive. Call off the search party.”

Penny and Jamie exchanged a glance which was mostly unnecessary, since they could both hear the confusion echoing in each other’s heads.

“Search party?”

“They _look_ fine,” Tony continued into his comm. “Yeah, I’ll check. Easy, Rubber Band, we’ll be down in a minute.”

Penny snorted at the mix of embarrassed and genuinely fond gibberish that sprang out of Jamie’s thoughts at the mention of Reed. _Oh no_ , Jamie was thinking—

“—is everyone looking for us?”

“You bet your luminescent ass, they are,” Tony said as he shut off the repulsors and touched down on the floor. “Speaking of which, would you mind shutting that whole thing off for a second? I need to check you out for lingering wizard-y side effects, and I don’t feel like staring directly at the sun, even in the suit.”

“We’re both fine,” Penny said quickly.

_So fine_ , Jamie thought unhelpfully, wiggling her eyebrows as she extinguished her flames and landed on the floor.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Tony sniffed. He paused, head tilting as he most likely listened to the AI in his suit. “Well. FRIDAY says you’re fine—”

“Told you.”

“— _physically_ , anyway. Any other problems you want to share with the class?”

“No!” Penny yelped at the same moment that Jamie started to say, “Yeah, we—”

Jamie cut herself off, shooting Penny a surprised look. _Uh, do you want to stay like this forever or something? Because as much as I can’t wait to hear all of your embarrassing inner monologue—_

_Of course I want you out of my head!_ Penny thought as scathingly as possible as she flipped off the wall. _We just don’t need to go telling Mr. Stark, okay? We’ll figure this out._

Jamie’s face screwed up in confusion. _But—_

_Stop pulling faces like that,_ Penny interrupted. _It’s so obvious you’re talking to someone right now._

_What? No, it’s not_ , Jamie thought, scowling at Penny.

_Oh, yeah, I’m sure you just decided to scowl at me after ten seconds of dead silence for no reason at all. Makes perfect sense. Cut it out, will you?_

_Oh, who cares, it’s not like he’ll be able to tell—_

_Uh, yes he_ will _, he’s_ Tony Stark—

“What’s with the sudden Iron Man hero worship?” Jamie snapped.

“Hey, all the cool kids are doing it,” Tony put in. He sounded _very_ amused.

_That was out loud! OUT LOUD! AAAAAHH—_ “What’s with the sudden flippant disregard for my privacy, huh?”

Jamie blinked at her. “Wow, do you always freak out internally like that when you’re trying to be cool with your snappy comebacks?”

_Oh, boy, this is where I die._ “You wouldn’t know _cool_ if it hit you over the head, hotshot.”

Jamie narrowed her eyes. _Was the pun on purpose?_

_Of course. It’s always on purpose._

“No offense, kid,” Tony drawled, causing the girls’ attention to snap back to him, “but you’re not really one to talk. Who in this room has a modeling contract with _Vogue_ , again?”

Now Tony and Jamie _both_ looked smug, like it was somehow Penny’s fault that she was friends with the prettiest and most influential people on Earth.

“That’s not fair. I’ve got…” She sighed. “…a warrant out for my arrest.”

Jamie snorted, and somehow managed to think, _Dork_ , in an affectionate way.

Penny just groaned. _Mr. Stark is never going to stop seeing me as a stupid kid._

_Oh, is_ that _what this is about?_

When Penny looked up, Jamie was wiggling her eyebrows at her.

_I just didn’t want him to think I’m an idiot who can’t handle one puny wizard dude,_ Penny thought sullenly.

Jamie started to smile. “But you _are_ an idiot who can’t handle—”

“I was doing _fine_ before you showed up and distracted me, thanks,” Penny grumbled.

Tony’s mask retracted so that he could fix both of them with the full force of his kind-of-condescending-and-definitely-smug grin. “Telepathy?”

Penny put her head in her hands. “More like some freaky Vulcan mind meld.”

“Huh.” Tony tilted his head, still seeming nonplussed. “How’s the secret identity, Webs?”

Jamie burst into nervous laughter. Penny just gave him a big thumbs down.

“Yikes, kiddo,” he said as the faceplate slid back down and his repulsors fired up again, already carrying him back through the broken window now that he knew they were (mostly) alright. “Contact the rest of the Four. And give me a call if you want me to get Strange to clean up your mess.”

_Oh, right, I could just erase the memories of—_

Jamie sucked in a sharp breath before Penny had even finished the thought. _Please no_.

_Um…_

_Wait, no, I can’t ask that of you._ Jamie reached forward to take her hand, biting her lip as she looked up into the eyes of Penny’s mask. “I want to know, _obviously_ , but you didn’t mean to tell me. I… I really wanted you to choose to trust me with this. To earn it, you know? So as much as I want this, as much as I want _you_ , I understand if you can’t… if you’d rather…”

Penny just rolled her eyes as Jamie rambled, reaching up and tugging her mask off.

_You’re actually really cute when you frown like that._

Jamie stuttered to a stop, blinking owlishly at her. “I… what? What are you—”

Penny smirked, reaching up to cup Jamie’s cheeks as she leaned in.

“I’m distracting you with how much I want to kiss you,” she whispered, lips hovering just inches away from Jamie’s. _I think you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever met._ “Is it working?”

Jamie nodded dumbly, mind impressively blank. “Uh-huh,” she said against Penny’s lips as she leaned the rest of the way in, “I think I forgot my own name.”

Penny laughed as she kissed her, slow and sweet. _I’m not going anywhere, Flamebrain._

“Are you sure?” Jamie asked breathlessly, knocking their foreheads together.

“Positive,” she said firmly. “I was going to tell you anyway, remember? I guess I just needed a little extra push.”

“From an evil version of the sorcerer in _Fantasia 2000_?”

“Honestly, I’ve had _way_ weirder wakeup calls before,” Penny confessed through her laughter. “This was pretty tame. At least I didn’t get schooled by an alternate universe clone of myself.”

Jamie squinted at her. “God, your life is weird.”

“Like I said,” Penny murmured as she leaned back in for another kiss, “could be worse.”

_We should probably find Reed soon_ , Jamie thought as one of her arms slid around Penny’s waist and tugged her closer.

_You’re right_ , Penny agreed, fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of Jamie’s neck, _we should get going._

But neither of them moved right away. By an unspoken agreement, they took their sweet time heading back, lingering in each other’s arms with just their shared thoughts for as long as they wanted.

* * *

 

“So it wasn’t magic after all?” Penny questioned as she squinted at the readouts on one of Reed’s gigantic monitors. She was leaning so far out of her seat that she probably would have fallen right out of it if not for her patented spider agility.

“No, just some very flashy alien technology,” Reed promised, gesturing at the various diagrams. “A combination of interdimensional teleportation and restructuring on the individual molecular level—”

“Cool,” Penny breathed. “But how does that explain our mind link? That seems a bit more—”

“Ah, yes, it’s one of the trickier effects, to be sure,” Reed cut in eagerly, rushing to pull up more data. “It involves certain electrical impulses—”

_Boooooring_.

Penny cringed as the thought distracted her from the rest of Reed’s explanation. She shot a glare at Jamie in the seat beside her, hoping that it would somehow transfer even through the mask. Then she remembered that she could do more than just hope.

_Knock it off_ , she thought sharply.

_Oh, come on,_ Jamie whined in Penny’s head. _We can literally hear each other’s thoughts and you want to waste it listening to Reed talk about molecules and stuff?_

Penny crossed her arms stiffly as she fixed Jamie with a glare through her mask. _Dr. Richards’s thoughts are actually_ interesting.

_Well, newsflash_ , Jamie thought with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, _Reed’s humungous brain will still be there even after he undoes our mind meld, so y-y-OW!_

“Ow, ow, _ow_!” Jamie yelped, tilting her head as Sue mercilessly pinched her ear. “Sue! What’s this for? I’m not even doing anything wrong!”

“Sure, ya ain’t, Torchy,” Ben rumbled from his seat on the other side of the lab. “And I’m the Queen of England.”

“Hey, now, Benjy,” Jamie said in a strained voice, “no need to go insulting the Queen. Isn’t that, like, blasphemy?”

“That only applies to irreverence,” Reed commented.

Sue mercifully released Jamie’s ear, but only so that she could put her hands on her hips. “Stop making Spider-Woman uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, Jamie,” Penny said smugly, “you’re supposed to be a good host, here.”

“How could you possibly know what I was doing?” Jamie complained to her sister. “You’re not the one with the freaky mental link!”

“I’m your sister,” Sue said primly. “I don’t need telepathy to read your thoughts.”

“That’s a little bit terrifying,” Jamie muttered.

“It’s just another one of Suzie’s superpowers,” Ben called.

“There’s a reason she’s the best member of the Four,” Penny agreed sagely.

_Hell yeah, she is_ , Jamie thought at the same time as she fixed Penny with her best puppy dog eyes and said, “Why not me?”

_You’re pretty great, too,_ Penny thought, but still said out loud, “…You’re okay.”

_That was pretty mean_. “But you admit that I’m awesome!”

Penny smirked. “I said no such thing, actually—”

“Wait, stop, I can’t do this thing where we have two conversations at once,” Jamie complained, rubbing her temples.

“Having trouble keeping up with me, Flamebrain?” Penny asked even as she wrapped an arm around Jamie’s shoulders.

“Hardly,” Jamie scoffed. “I’m just sick of listening to you say the opposite of what you mean over and over.”

“Then maybe now would be a good time to reverse the effects of the telepathic link?” Reed suggested mildly.

Penny turned back to him, startled and a bit contrite. “You already know how to fix it?”

Sue smiled. “You weren’t the only ones that needed some ‘spells’ undone.”

Reed waved a suspicious gun-like item around. “In the most simplified terms, it’s just a matter of emitting an electromagnetic pulse of a certain frequency—”

_So this is it._

This time, when Jamie’s thoughts cut through Reed’s scientific chatter, Penny had no qualms about tuning out the technobabble to focus on her girlfriend. She gave Jamie’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. _Ready to have your mind back to yourself?_

_We could just stay like this._

_I would rather die, full offense_.

Penny winced at how harsh the thought came out, but it was true. Jamie’s face visibly fell, though, and she found herself scrambling to soften the blow a bit.

_I mean, this right here,_ she pointed out frantically, _where I think something kinda mean before I have the chance to think about it a little more._

Jamie snorted. _Webhead, you say plenty of mean stuff out loud, too._

_Yeah, but at least by then it’s funny._

Jamie giggled, and Penny counted it as a win. _Score. I love making you laugh._

_It’s thoughts like that,_ Jamie thought wistfully. _You never say things like that out loud. I’m going to miss it._

Penny shifted uncomfortably. _Um… I guess I could try to… just talk about my, uh, feelings more. Or whatever._

Jamie was really laughing now. _Really?_

_If that’s what you want,_ Penny thought, feeling her resolve harden as Jamie looked at her with those blue eyes, crinkled a bit at the corners from smiling. _Then, yeah. We’ll still be in this together, right?_

Jamie stared at her for a moment. Then, _I want to kiss you, right now, in front of my whole family._

Penny let out a loud squeak and scooted away. _Don’t you_ dare—

“Just zap ‘em, Stretch,” came Ben’s voice, pulling the two girls back into the verbal conversation before Penny could web Jamie to her chair. “They won’t even notice.”

Sue was looking at them with this big, goofy grin on her face. “Are you two ready?”

“Yes! Do it!” Penny said quickly, followed by Jamie’s much more casual, “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Alright then,” Reed said, aiming the ray gun for the two of them. “Firing in three… two… one…”

Penny just barely had time to think, _See you on the other side, Jamie_ , before the familiar sensation of lightning once again zipped down her spine, momentarily stilling all her thoughts. It was less intense than the villain’s zap, though, and it only lasted for a split second.

Just like that, it was over. Penny blinked once, twice; she didn’t _feel_ any different, but—

Jamie narrowed her eyes. “What am I thinking about right now?”

Penny sat in silence, concentrating. After a few moments, she heaved a huge sigh. “I’m hoping it worked, but your head might just be full of nothing.”

“Ha! Joke’s on you, I wasn’t thinking about anything!” Jamie crowed. Then, processing what Penny had said, she said, “Wait—”

Penny put her head in her hands. “God, it’s like we don’t even need the mind meld. We’ve got the stupid intimate, Kirk-and-Spock soulmate bond all by ourselves.”

“That sounded like a compliment, but I’m not fluent in Nerd,” Jamie snarked.

“Jamie, you’ve got the record for the most _Star Trek_ episodes watched out of everyone in the Baxter Building,” Reed said sternly.

“ _Reed!_ ” Jamie hissed, face flushing instantly.

“Face it, little sis,” Sue said as she gave Jamie’s hair an unnecessary ruffle, “you’re just made for each other.”

“Yeah,” Jamie mumbled as she slowly started to smile. “I guess so, huh?”

“Sorry for ya, Webs,” Ben said sincerely.

Penny waved him off. “It’s fine,” she promised, beaming back at Jamie. “I’m okay being stuck with her.”


End file.
